California's jails are so bad some inmates beg to go to prison instead
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Ever since he stole his first car at age 10, Cody Garland has spent much of his life behind bars. Now 35, he has served time at eight different California prisons.
But the hardest stint, he says, was not in a state penitentiary. It was in a Sacramento County jail, where in 2016 he was sentenced to serve eight years for burglary, identity theft and other charges.
Medical care at the jail was even worse than in prison; untreated glaucoma left him legally blind, he says.
Solitary confinement - in a windowless room - was a common punishment; Garland says he lost track of whether it was day or night during a spell in solitary and began to hear voices.
Mental health help was hard to get, he alleged, even after he started swallowing shards of metal and tried to hang himself. He detailed the treatment in a lawsuit accusing the county of subjecting inmates to inhumane conditions - a claim the county denies.
"I've done a lot of prison time," he says, "and this was the worst time I'd ever done."
Garland is one of more than 175,000 people sentenced to county jails instead of state prisons in the last eight years because of sweeping changes
